Over the past few months, Condoleezza Rice has had a media renaissance of sorts. She’s been prominent in raising money for Republican female candidates. Over the past few months, she was discussed as a frontrunner during Mitt Romney’s vice presidential search. She has a prime speaking role at the upcoming Republican National Convention, where she will seek to attract more female swing voters to Romney’s side. Last week, Rice – a longtime Cleveland Browns fan – made her modeling debut for the NFL’s women’s clothing line. Yesterday it was announced that she was of the first two women invited to join the Augusta National Golf Club, which has denied membership to women since its inception in 1933.
While it appears to casual observers that Rice is making a comeback, she never really left the national scene. Returning to a Stanford University post after her tenure with the Bush administration, Rice subsequently launched a consulting firm to help American businesses in emerging markets. She has penned two best-selling books over the past two years. She joined forces across the political aisle with legendary singer Aretha Franklin to raise money to increase inner-city youth’s participation in the arts.
Rice has long been the most popular figure from the Bush administration years, with 58 percent of Americans still approving of her even during the Bush administration’s most tumultuous years.
However, this latest media wave may serve as the evolution of Rice’s re-branding campaign to distance her from her Bush-era political tenure. She is increasingly transforming herself from doing mostly policy work to being a trailblazing Renaissance Woman icon across various arenas: education, foreign affairs, sports, business, and the arts.
Part of the reason for Rice’s re-emergence in the public consciousness could be economic nostalgia for the Bush days, especially among Republicans and an increasing number of independents. Unemployment has been above 8 percent throughout the Obama administration, compared to a 5.2 percent unemployment average during the Bush administration. President Obama has made whatever he fiscally inherited significantly worse by racking up more federal debt within his one term than Bush did across two terms. The Congressional Budget Office reports that food stamp rolls have also increased by 70 percent since 2007.
Despite the economic malaise, Rice’s popularity may also be precisely because she has never been an elected official. Rice may serve to confirm for many center-right voters’ minds that the Republican Party is increasingly a welcoming place for racial minorities and represents racial progress in the wider society. Younger Republicans especially yearn for an inspiring political figure capable of going toe-to-toe with President Obama.
While Rice’s life story makes her a very compelling “Great Black Hope” for the Republican Party, ideological realities within the GOP dictate that she will not be in a position to significantly help the party with black voters or independent female voters as is often claimed in media articles.
Rice’s pro-choice stance on abortion, support for gay civil unions, and relative tolerance for illegal immigration could benefit the GOP with independent female voters in a general election. However, her positions put her at odds with the party’s socially conservative base. Some 71 percent of Republican voters self-identify as “conservative” or “very conservative”. Due to her socially moderate views, social conservatives have long had an uneasy relationship with Rice.
There’s also the issue of Rice’s coyness regarding whether or not she voted for President Obama in 2008. Thus there was a swift conservative outcry when her name was trial ballooned as a potential vice presidential candidate. As long as social conservatives constitute almost three-quarters of the GOP electorate, it will be quite difficult for Rice to unify the party’s center-right triumvirate on fiscal, social, and foreign policy issues.
Rice is also not the ideal 2016 presidential or vice president candidate. She has never held elected office, and American voters prefer governors and U.S. Senators for president. Rice herself has repeatedly stated that her personality is better suited for policy work than elected office.
More importantly, Dr. Rice would bring few black votes to the Republican side as a presidential or vice presidential candidate. While studies show that 21 percent of black Americans support a smaller government providing fewer services, 69 percent favor a larger government. Thus the black majority view and the Republican Party platform regarding the proper role of government are fundamentally at odds.
Only 4 percent of black voters voted for the Republican Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential campaign, compared with 31 percent of Hispanic voters. With Hispanic voters almost eight times likelier to swing their votes than black voters and the fact that Hispanic political clout will further increase over election cycles, political trends lie outside Black America for the 2016 presidential race. Thus, up-and-coming Hispanic Republican politicians – such as U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) or New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez – are better positioned to actually deliver votes for the GOP.
Condoleezza Rice’s most useful next steps for her party are in swing states, where a small but significant swing in the black vote could tip things in Mitt Romney’s favor. This is a similar strategy to what George W. Bush successfully deployed in winning Ohio (and thus re-election) in 2004. As BlackElectorate.com publisher Cedric Muhammad points out, a Republican presidential candidate typically gets elected if he wins 10 percent (or more) of the overall black vote.
Rice could galvanize the 21 percent of pro-smaller-government black voters by challenging the Democratic Party to show why it hasn’t organically developed Black America despite having monopoly political power within black communities for almost five decades. She could highlight black concerns that Obama has consistently overlooked, even while he is amenable to other groups’ agenda items: high black unemployment, the negative impact of the War on Drugs in black communities, and a coherent policy on Africa.
Rice could zero in on the crime-based “War On Women” going on within our own communities (unfortunately, overwhelmingly by our own) – which liberals conveniently ignore while zeroing in on Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-Mo.) idiotic “legitimate rape” comment. Another area where Rice can shine brightly is her school-choice activities, highlighting the need for poor black students to be able to use school vouchers in order to escape failing schools. By embracing these issues, Rice can solidify her increasing image as a Renaissance Woman.